FROM the forthcoming Our Borders, Ourselves: America in the Age of Multiculturalism by Lawrence Auster:

I was once talking with a female acquaintance at a dinner party in Manhattan. She was in her late thirties, married without children, a moderate Republican with a high-level position in the New York business world. In the course of a friendly chat about bilingualism, I remarked that our common language cannot be defended (as I felt she was trying to do) simply on a utilitarian basis, but that we must see that our language is one of the things that forms us as a culture. We will not be able to oppose bilingualism effectively, I said, unless we see ourselves as members of that culture, and not just as participants in an economy.

My friend reacted very warmly to what I had said, as if seeing an important idea that had never occurred to her before. “Of course!” she murmured excitedly. “There has to be assimilation into a common culture!” Hardly a moment had passed, however, before she suddenly shifted into a more somber tone: “But if we had such assimilation today,” she said, “I wouldn’t have a career. I’d be home with children.” With that, our conversation about “defending our common culture” stopped dead in its tracks.

At the moment of discovering the existence of an American culture above and apart from individual freedom and money-making, my friend felt compelled to reject that culture because in her mind that culture is also associated with pre-feminist norms that define a woman’s primary role as caregiver and child raiser. She suddenly discovered that she had a vested interest in the common culture’s not being affirmed. Faced with a choice between the preservation of our culture and the freedom of women from traditional sex roles, she chose freedom. It was as though she had become a “cultural conservative” for one brief moment, then saw what that really involved and rejected it forever.

The above anecdote illustrates the profound dilemma facing Western society. Many of us who are concerned about the weakening of our culture happen to be deeply invested in the forces — such as unlimited markets, unlimited immigration, and unlimited personal choice — that are dissolving that culture. Feminism exemplifies this demand for the absolute freedom of the individual from social authority and tradition, and for the removal of sex roles and other “arbitrary” distinctions between different types of human beings. The increasing freedom and equality of women in the twentieth century is something most Americans celebrate, or at least see as unquestionable. Yet it is also unquestionable that sexual equality (and its partner, sexual liberation) has directly harmed our ability to continue as a people.

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